SISTERS, Ore. (AP) — Workers are tearing out the last of half a dozen concrete dams on a Central Oregon stream and its tributaries, erasing yet another barrier to the return of imperiled fish to the Deschutes River system.
The work is underway on Whychus Creek near Sisters, on the east flank of the Cascade Range.
The Whychus is part of the drainage of the Deschutes, Central Oregon’s major river. Salmon and steelhead began returning to the Whychus after a fish tower was installed in Lake Billy Chinook, a big reservoir on the Deschutes.
The $2 million project on the Whychus includes knocking down a 6-foot dam, with the expectation that it will restore a flood plain and 13 miles of fish habitat.
The dam has provided irrigation water for about three decades to the Pine Meadow Ranch, running through a mile-long canal to its 200 irrigated acres. It is the latest of the structures that has fed irrigation water to the ranch since the late 19th century. Because the ranch has switched to a more efficient pump-fed pivot irrigation system, which pulls water from the creek downstream of the dam, stream flows are expected to increase.
The new system also eliminates annual canal maintenance, said Dorro Sokol, president of the ranch.
IMathias Perle, project manager for the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, a Bend-based restoration group, said negotiations are underway over one more river obstruction upstream on the Whychus, where an old-growth log diverts water. There, Perle said, there are about 30 water rights holders, compared with just one at the Pine Meadow Ranch.
